#BUT NOT MY GOLD BEAN AND MY QUEEN AND MY EMPEROR MKAY

[mangacat201]

Let’s talk about love language in ‘Vincenzo’ for a minute

And I know that there’s a lot of fabulous treatises on it already, but I’m still flashed by the utter mastery that was the episode 19 end scene and I want to add one specific observation that has pricked my brain from that.

This is going to be a raw, unstructured, rambling flatus cerebralis with nyagh, maybe not enough evidence to back it up. But I don’t care.

So, love language in A side and B side cause ‘Vincenzo’ loves their dichonomies.

We all know that Vincenzo and Cha Young express their feelings for each other in gestures rather than words (and even if they use words it’s metaphorical, oblique, coded and never direct).

From conveying attraction with offer of a wine glass, seeking physical reassurance in a hug and then respecting boundaries of not being on the same page, via giving gifts that say ‘I want to you always carry a piece of me with you and remember when you look at it’ to gifts that are ‘you can trust me to bring down the Tower for you in retribution’ and ‘you can trust me to hold vigil for your loved one while you stymy your rage until you can actually grieve’ to we will share our greatest deeds and greatest misdeeds and not judge each other.

That is how they express their love.

We are all very frustrated that they’ve never come right out and said it, but the reason for that isn’t because WE don’t know how they feel about each other, it’s because until it’s said out loud and unequivocally that we can’t be sure THEY know how they feel about each other.

But, y’all love in words is never going to be their thing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that holds true to the very end. And I have to say, I think it should.

Why? Cause there is someone who uses words over actions to try and express the same thing, which is Jang Han Seok, who from the very beginning when we didn’t even know who he was yet was very brash and direct - Sunbae, I want to go out with you, why don’t we date,... persistently and blatantly broadcasting his attraction and infatuation until ‘don’t you know how much I love you’.

(If I had half a braincell working, I could probably come up with some more instances, but I haven’t so I won’t, feel free to supplement)

But for all his openness and direct approach, these words are, if maybe not entirely disingenuous, then at least always performative. He sees something shiny he wants to own and control, but is incapable of the kind of love that reads to us as authentic and true. He knows what the words are supposed to represent and how to use them to effect, but is unable to grasp their actual meaning. Which is why someone like Cha Young, who has a strong foundation in the actual feeling of loving and being loved (familial in the beginning of the show, no matter how fraught her relationship with her dad is on the surface, and romantic as her connection to Vincenzo deepens) cuts through his bullshit with such scathing precision.

So, with love as with many other things, the show establishes that words are cheap and empty and actions speak much louder any day.

Which is words of love are reserved for the antagonists and actions of love for the protagonists.